Content, Writing and Copyright Forum

As yet another client asks me about the best way for them to implement an email newsletter system, I find myself taking a step back and looking at the whole issue afresh. Some of my thoughts are below and I'd be interested to hear other people's ideas.

A kind of Dos and Don'ts list might even be helpful. I'll start with a couple.

DOConsider the Pros and Cons of using HTML embedded in the newsletter. It may look great in some email clients, but it will come out as a complete mess in others. Also, some firewalls, security software will bounce it. Consider using plain text, it won't look as good, but it will be readable.

DONTUse use complex formatting or attach non-standard file types.

DOThink about if you really need to send all this information to your clients/members? Would it be more useful to just write a few lines and then link to more detailed information on your web site? Perhaps consider attaching a PDF?

DONTEmbed Flash, high resolution PDFs or JPEGs.

What do people think of those I've started with? In particular the text versus html argument?

We send out a quarterly newsletter to about 600 clients and related entities.

We use Campaign Monitor software to do the sending - brilliant.

We used to send it full HTML e-mail, but because we really want our e-mails to get through the corporate software spam-traps, we've decided recently to now send a plain text e-mail with just a 'catchy' summary of the Newsletter contents, and a link to the Newsletter that we put up on the web - so they click the link, and they read the newsletter in their browser.

What we also do is have a Newsletter archive page on our web site with attractive screenshots (reduced in size) of each Newsletter - you want to read that newsletter, just click the screenshot. It is very nice.